


If You Want Peace

by That_Ghost_Kristoff



Series: Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy, The Borgias (2011)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Star Wars Setting, F/M, Raised Apart, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-04
Updated: 2016-01-04
Packaged: 2018-05-11 15:36:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5631841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/That_Ghost_Kristoff/pseuds/That_Ghost_Kristoff
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It takes Cesare Borgia two weeks to learn he's meant to be a Jedi, meet his brother, and fall in love with the Princess of Alderaan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If You Want Peace

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TheElusiveBadger](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheElusiveBadger/gifts).



> This is weird. I'm not going to pretend otherwise. My friend and I were watching Return of the Jedi, texting about the Borgias, and then suddenly I was writing this and she's messaging me ideas for what to do next and editing issues. 
> 
> 1) I had to fuck with the Borgia siblings' ages (though, to be fair, Juan Borgia's age is contested by like four years, so he may have been oldest), so keep that in mind. 
> 
> 2) The adoption combinations might not be the most obvious choices, but it worked the best for the narrative.

A week before Cesare leaves for the Academy, he and Aunt Giulia sit on the roof of the main house with a half-filled pitcher of their own harvested water and a plate of leftover bread. It’s not much of a celebration, but it’s the best they have.

“Don’t show off too much,” she says as he reclines back against the roof, pillowing his head with his hands, “or you’ll draw the Empire’s attention. I don’t need you turning out like stories.”

Above them, the stars shine bright and endless, light catching the rare grey strands in her hair so they glow silver in red. He watches the stars, and wonders what constellations other planets have. “You don’t need to worry about that,” he says, glancing from the sky to her and back again. “No one’s going to care about someone from Tatooine.”

Out here in the Outer Rim, he’s the best pilot there is, but he’s been to Mos Eisley enough to know that doesn’t mean much now that the races have been disbanded. It’s not as though he cares—the Empire is the reason the entirety of Tatooine is populated with fewer free people than the population of the least populated city on a planet like Alderaan. In the eyes of the Empire, this makes them about as useless as the womp rats he’s spent his childhood killing for target practice and, during the couple seasons of desperation, food. Everyone west of Anchorhead knows this, which is why half live and die in the same place they were born. But that won’t be his fate if he has anything to say about it. Can’t, really, since he isn’t from here to begin with.

At eighteen, Cesare’s never been further than the Jundland wastes, but that doesn’t mean he belongs here the way Charlotte from two farms over does, because everyone knows he’s an outworlder. His skin’s a shade darker than any native, and burns as easily as it tans. Even if Giulia says his mother was from here, Cesare was born on his father’s foreign planet to his aunt’s sister who died during birth. He likes to think he’s from somewhere with an ocean that touches the horizon. Sometimes at night he dreams of forests green and brown, though the only oceans and forests he knows of come from the stories he hears in Mos Eisley. Once he leaves, he can see them for himself.

This is his plan, as simple and straightforward as it is: he’ll graduate early from the Academy and get a job somewhere that pays well so he can buy a place on a planet with as much water as Tatooine has sand. Then he’ll come back for Aunt Giulia, and give it to her, because she’s always deserved better than to die on a moisture farm surrounded by small-minded people still claiming she needs to be married to raise her nephew right.

When he first told her this, he was fifteen and his eye was black from a fight with Ursula’s boyfriend, who he hit for hitting her only to be hit back, and got no thanks for it. “You’re a Borgia,” Aunt Giulia said with an arched brow, like that meant something other than he doesn’t have a slave’s surname. “You’re going to do more for yourself than a house on the water.”

It’s been years now, and Cesare still can’t imagine anything better than living on a shore.

“Even so,” she says, combing her fingers through her curls to drag them over her shoulder. “What a shame it would be if all the trouble I put into that paperwork went to waste.”

By now, Cesare’s stopped asking why she spent so long making certain everyone knew he wasn’t a Farnese only to forge his papers when he decided to apply for the academy. “If I do get drafted, I’ll run away,” he says as she sips at her water. “Maybe join the Alliance. Bet their pilots are dying fast enough they’re always looking for new ones.”

“Promise me not to do that, either,” she says for the first time, surprising him. The thought of joining the Alliance was never an active aspiration, but it crossed his mind every once in awhile. Hating the Empire is second nature to anyone on Tatooine, and the one thing he might have in common with all the locals. Even Charlotte, who he’s been sleeping with for six months, is barely interesting enough to hold his attention for long. “Keep your head down. Don’t run your mouth too much. And don’t forget to send word home.”

“I can keep quiet when no one’s being an idiot,” he says, knowing she’s referring to the number of times his teachers in Anchorhead would tape his mouth shut as a kid for being too much of a smartass. “The teachers there have to be smarter than the ones around here.”

Aunt Giulia laughs, and says, “Stupidity is the most common disease in the galaxy, Cesare. It just comes in different breeds.”

Cesare’s never cared much about humility, because he knows his own worth. By the time he was twelve, he was smarter than half the adults he knew, and had enough common sense and quick thinking to get out of any trouble he got himself into. The exception was always Machiavelli, the hermit living out in the Jundland wastes who wrote short stories for money, and who everyone claimed was insane. If more people were like Machiavelli or Aunt Giulia, maybe Cesare would actually have friends.

“I guess I’ll just have to get used to it then,” he says, and sits up. A star shoots across the sky, or maybe a freighter on its way to somewhere better than here. “How—”

Before he can finish speaking, there’s the noise of two large gears grinding together, and then an explosion that lights up the dark desert landscape with a resounding screech. It’s the most recent droid, Cesare sees as Aunt Giulia scrambles down from the roof to put the fire out before it attracts the Sand People. A moment later, he’s down too, dread twisting inside him as he realizes that leaving for this season will be impossible if the Jawas don’t come by within the week.

With a splash of the remaining water in the pitcher, the flames are out, leaving the droid fried and charred and useless, and Cesare thinks he might run away to join the Alliance anyway if this means he has to stay here for another year.

 

 

By some measure of luck Cesare rarely ever has, the Jawas come by the day following the explosion of the old droid with a new one that seem promising.

“What’s your name?” Cesare asks after taking the little droid into the workshop to scrub him off. In response, the little droid gives a series of squeaks and whirrs that means either he never had one, or he doesn’t remember. “Memory wipe? Huh. Okay.” He falls silent for a moment, contemplating, before saying, “Gioffre all right by you?”

The droid rattles, beeping like Charlotte’s mechanical cat. When he was younger, there was a boy in town named Gioffre the older kids taunted because he played with his sister’s ragdoll. A few years later he was killed during a raid, but the name seems good enough for a droid. It’s not like Cesare knows that many others.

Cleaning the outside of the droid—of Gioffre—is easy, as most of the grime comes from either the desert sands or muck on the Jawa rover, but his outlets are covered with so much carbon scoring that Cesare doesn’t know where to start. “Were you in a battle or something?” he says as he takes a coarse bristled brush to scrape away at the damage. “This is ridiculous.”

As he rubs at a particularly thick patch, Gioffre politely reminds him about the memory wipe. Then, with an alarmed squeak, a blue light bursts out of the outlet, temporarily blinding Cesare with its brightness. He stumbles back, barely catching himself from falling, and when his vision clears, he finds the small image of a girl staring past him towards the corner of the room.

“ _Y_ _ou’ve been gone for too long, Machiavelli_ ,” she says, voice grainy and broken over the distant sound of blasters. “ _We’re in need of your assistance before it’s too late_.”

The image flickers, then loops. It’s part of a message clearly, but Cesare hadn’t seen the evidence of any disk or drive. As he peels his gaze away from the determined, delicate face of the hologram to Gioffre, he says, “Play it back. Play back the whole message.”

Another set of clicks and whirs informs him that the circuit the Jawas installed is shorting out his system. The unknown girl asks for Machiavelli, like the Machiavelli from the Jundland wastes, for help, as Cesare hesitates. Droids running away isn’t unusual, and he can’t risk that so close to his chance to leave, but something like instinct tugs at him. There’s this girl projected on his carpet begging for help with a name he knows, and feels almost as though he knows _her_ , even if that’s impossible.

No one on Tatooine is that clean, after all, and he thinks he would remember meeting someone that beautiful.

His hesitation dissipates with that thought, and he takes a hammer and chisel to knock off the security circuit. Whoever this pale haired, desperate, determined girl is, she needs help, and Cesare can get the message to Machiavelli at the very least. “Where’d it go?” he says as the message disappears, looking from the empty space to Gioffre. “Hey, I thought you—you aren’t showing that until you get it to Machiavelli, are you?”

With an affirmative beep and a few clicks, Gioffre tells him those are orders, and Machiavelli is his master, which means Cesare was just tricked by a droid. “Great,” he says as Aunt Giulia’s voice rings out from the main house, calling him for dinner. He stands, throwing the security circuit to the wall, because once it’s off, it can’t be put back on. “I know a Machiavelli that lives around here. Stick around and I’ll bring you in the morning, but then you’re coming back, understand? I’m out of here, and some droid isn’t going to screw that up for me.”

Almost as if taunting him, the blue hologram beams out again from the outlet, unveiling the girl in all her pristine splendor. Even twelve inches tall and colorless, she’s still a goddess compared to any woman he’s ever met. “ _You’ve been gone for too long, Machiavelli_ ,” she says to no one. “ _You’ve been gone for too long._ ”

He leaves the droid alone in the workshop playing its looped message, and joins his aunt for dinner.

 

 

When Lucrezia was twelve, the name “Juan Borgia” entered her life as the antagonist to every horror story her parents’ friends told. He was ruthless and cruel and could make you do _things_ just by telling you to, they said. He fought with a blade made of lightning. He truly was his father’s son.

Never had anyone mentioned that he was so young.

Now, at eighteen, she stands as a prisoner across from him on the control deck of the Death Star, and finds that Juan Borgia can’t be more than two years older than her at the most. “Lucrezia Sforza,” he says, hood thrown back to reveal messy, light red hair and a face so startlingly like hers they could be brother and sister. Beyond the glass that makes up the far wall is her home planet of Alderaan, where Paolo must be tending the gardens, unaware of the danger his dear Lucrezia has gotten herself into. “Caterina Sforza’s prized daughter. Tell me, Princess Lucrezia, how many years do you have?”

Stormtroopers and workers mill around them, switching buttons or sending out signals, and none spare them a glance. No one stands directly behind her, nor is she bound. Even so, she doesn’t doubt that if she tries to run, someone will shoot her down before she makes it more than two feet—and that’s only if Juan Borgia doesn’t get to her first. If rumors are true, then he can stop her without so much as moving.

Running isn’t an option today, as attractive as escape seems, so instead she squares her shoulders, and looks him in the eye. “It’s rude to ask a lady her age,” she says. “Didn’t your father ever teach you that?”

There’s a feeling suddenly around her heart, as though a hand grabbed it and _squeezed_ , but it fades even as she gasps. “Be careful, Princess,” he says, tone as sharp as the look he gave her when the pain came. “I wouldn’t want to hurt you without reason. So tell me, how many years?”

Phantom pain still radiates from her heart, which is beating harder now as though to make up for brief moment it stopped. Lucrezia’s never felt so violated. “Eighteen,” she says. “I’m eighteen.”

“Eighteen,” he repeats, and turns to face the glass where morning is just spreading across Alderaan’s western hemisphere. “You spent eighteen years on this planet of yours. I want the name of your rebel base, Princess, or I’ll reduce your planet to dust right here.”

“You can’t destroy a whole planet,” she says as he raises his hand to signal a group of soldiers in black by the switchboard. “The firepower that would take—”

“Would need to be housed in a space station the size of a moon,” Juan Borgia says, which is true, and which they’re standing in. “What will it be, sweet Lucrezia? Alderaan, or the Alliance?”

He seems bored as he says it, like he’d rather do just about anything other than threaten her. Somehow, that only worsens her growing panic. Alderaan is peaceful, weaponless. Down there is Paolo, who loves her, and Alfonso, who she’s meant to love. Father’s down there, and her brother, who calls her sweet Lucrezia, too. But if she tells Juan Borgia, ghost story of the galaxy, the truth, then the Alliance would never survive the consequences. There has to be a third option, though, like Mother always said. She just has to think of it before he does.

There’s always Dantooine, she realizes. It was abandoned not long ago, and there may be some casualties from Outer Rim traffic, but not an entire planet’s population.

“It’s Dantooine,” she says, and hopes she sounds believable. She’s worked directly for the Alliance for three years, but has never been trained in this. “In the grasslands of the south.”

With a brief, humorless smile, he turns again to the soldiers at the switchboard and says, “Fire when ready.”

Lucrezia jerks forward, but stops when she hits an invisible barrier. “But I gave you the location,” she says, raising her voice over the rushing of the charging beam. “You said you would leave them alone.”

“I lied,” he says, and grabs a fistful of her hair, forcing her to look out at her beautiful planet below. She thinks of Paolo untangling briars from her curls, and Father dancing around with her when she was young, leading her on the top of his feet. This early in the morning, Benito will still be in bed, burrowed under a mountain of covers, unwilling to move. “Do you see them, Princess? All the ones you care about down there? Think hard about who’s dying for _your_ lie, and then tell me the truth.”

“I didn’t, I—”

From somewhere below them, a red beam erupts, sailing across the sky like a comet. It bursts against the atmosphere, fire eating across the clouds, before striking at the planet’s surface. It ruptures, surface breaking apart like the shards of an egg shell to spread across the sky. In the moment of impact, she imagines she can hear it, every voice of every one of her people crying out all at once in pain only to be silenced. That silence washes over her, deafening the clamour of the soldiers around her, and when Juan Borgia removes his hand from her hair, she feels her legs grow weak.

When she falls back into awareness, he has a grip on her upper arm, keeping her steady. “I’m not easy to lie to,” he says, fingers digging sharp into her skin. “When I join you in your cell next, I expect you’ll tell me the truth.”

“I’m going to kill you,” she says as he passes her off to the guards who brought her in. “I’m going to _kill_ you, Juan Borgia.”

“Oh, my sweet Lucrezia,” he says mildly, already turning away to view the aftermath of Alderaan’s destruction, “I imagine you’d try.”

 

 

Machiavelli’s small hut at the edge of the Jundland wastes is cooler than Cesare imagined, and smells thickly of fresh ink. For all they’ve talked, he’s never stepped inside here before.

“Well, this certainly is a problem,” Machiavelli says after the recording finishes, and begins to loop. It’s the full one this time, as Cesare expected. “A Sforza princess begging for aid. I never thought I’d see the day.”

Though Cesare’s heard of the Queen Caterina Sforza, he hadn’t known she had a daughter. _Lucrezia_ , he thinks as he watches her holographic form explain a situation he barely understands. Lucrezia isn’t the sort of name found around here, but then again, neither is Cesare Borgia. He wonders if her hair is really as pale as it looks.

Glancing at Machiavelli, he says, “You know her?”

“Not personally,” Machiavelli answers as the message disappears, “but I knew her mother when she was about your age. She was a good politician, and a better warrior. The Sforza family isn’t known to ask for help.”

On Tatooine, asking for help can mean the difference between life and death, but Cesare can understand the Sforza family’s reluctance anyway. “The situation must be bad then,” he says. Gioffre beeps affirmative. “Are you going to go?”

“I think I have to,” the other man says, folding his arms over his chest. He pauses for a long moment before continuing, “You can join me, if you wish.”

Cesare startles, and almost agrees right there without considering the consequences. Then he thinks of Aunt Giulia, alone on the moisture farm with her hair blazing in the sun. “I can’t,” he says reluctantly. “My aunt isn’t leaving this place if I don’t make the money to support us.”

Sighing loudly, dramatically, Machiavelli says, “That’s a shame. It’s been a long time since I’ve had someone to train.”

“You want to train me? In what?” When Cesare was younger, and school wasn’t moving fast enough or Aunt Giulia was unable to get something new for him to read, he’d find Machiavelli in Anchorhead and beg him for a lesson on anything. In all these years, he never mentioned wanting to take Cesare on as an apprentice.

As the other man stands, he says, “In the same art your father and brother are trained in. You know enough of your legends to remember what the Jedi were, I’m sure.” Before Cesare can answer, still struggling to connect _father_ and _brother_ and _Jedi_ , Machiavelli produces a wooden box. “This belonged to your father,” he continues as he opens it, producing a silver cylinder the size of the ones that power the engines on the farm, but the wrong shape, “and he’d hate for you to have it, which is reason enough why you should.”

The last time Cesare asked about his father, he was ten, and wanted to know why Aunt Giulia wouldn’t let him go by Farnese in school. With her in his life, the idea of a parent never seemed important. “Who was he?” he asks, tampering down the rushing thoughts of _how_ and _why_ running through his mind. “What did he do? How do you know him?”

“Oh, it’s not ‘was,’” Machiavelli answers, and suddenly, breathing isn’t as easy as it was. “We were friends once, back in the days when we worked with one another as Jedi and Senator. Then he overtook Caterina Sforza, killed the rest of the Jedi, and kept me around to train his son—your older brother. You look a little overwhelmed. Would you like me to slow down, Cesare?”

With education as limited here as it is, Cesare’s never learned much of his galactic history, but he at least knows about the creation the Empire. “You just told me my father is the Emperor,” he says, digging his nails into his palm, “and you’re asking if you should slow down? No, you’re wrong. You’ve got the wrong person.”

He isn’t aware he’s also standing until he’s looking at Machiavelli evenly rather than from below, who stares back with a straight mouth and a steady gaze. “Do I, Cesare _Borgia?_ ” Machiavelli says. “Or is it better I say Cesare Farnese now? I doubt Giulia was willing to let her sister’s son leave the planet with his real name.”

“The Empire’s the reason the slave trade hasn’t been eradicated yet,” Cesare says. “It’s the reason the galaxy’s falling to pieces. And you’re seriously telling me I’m the ruler’s kid?”

“Second son, yes,” Machiavelli says. “We were able to get you away to your mother’s sister after she died in childbirth, but we could do nothing for Juan. The last I heard he’s off terrifying the universe. He very well might be the one holding Princess Lucrezia hostage as we speak.”

“You’re wrong,” Cesare says again. “My aunt took me after my mom died in childbirth. No one told her to do it. And even if I did believe you, then why would want to train me? As a fuck you to the Emperor?”

Without pause, Machiavelli says, “Why, of course.” Cesare breathes deep, and releases slowly, thoughts involuntarily returning to the flickering image of Lucrezia Sforza pleading for assistance. “Seeing Rodrigo Borgia’s face when he realizes I _have_ trained his son would give me the utmost satisfaction. But it’s—”

“So, Borgia.” The name feels heavy in his mouth, acting for the first time as a weight on his back. For years, it was the outworlder name that kept any of the slavers from claiming they had a right to him because he was once a slave’s son. “It’s the name of the...imperial family?”

“It’s a name the Emperor goes by no longer,” Machiavelli says, “but your brother is still known as Juan Borgia. When you leave, it would be wise to keep this name to yourself. There aren’t many people left with any capability to become Jedi, Cesare. You have it in your best interest to accept the offer of training before someone else learns who you are.”

Even on Tatooine, where Cesare never learned the imperial family’s name, he’s heard the stories of what the Empire will do to people. If they find him, then they’ll kill Aunt Giulia, too, just for association. “Fine,” he says after a moment, thinking it through, “but my aunt’s coming with us to Alderaan. After that, train me for any fuck you that you want. It’s not like the Emperor doesn’t deserve to be overthrown by now.”

Shockingly, Machiavelli doesn’t protest, and instead holds out the silver cylinder. “Agreed,” he says. “Now I think you should have this.”

As Cesare touches it, a pain spikes inside his head, and he sees a red headed boy crying into a stuffed animal because someone died—sees, then, the Sand People who tried to attack them, but were knocked out by a falling rock—and sees, finally, a girl with hair like the sun laughing in a downpour of white rain.

When the images fade, he’s back again on Machiavelli’s cool limestone floor. “What was that?” Cesare says, disoriented as the other man helps him back to his feet. The lightsaber’s on in his hand, humming blue like someone cut out a rectangle from the midday sky and electrified it. “How do I turn this off? What did I just see?”

“You reacted phenomenally well to an ancestral heirloom, it seems,” Machiavelli says, “though as for what you saw, I can’t know without you telling me. You turn it off there.”

On the side is a button that Cesare dutifully presses, unwilling to have this on any longer. For all his life he’s dreamed of leaving this planet, but this isn’t how he imagined doing it. “You said I had a brother?” he says, still unable to believe this fully. “What color was his hair?”

With a raised brow, Machiavelli says, “So that’s what you saw. It’s red. Lighter than Giulia’s.”

“Oh, great,” Cesare says, pushing his hair through his hair with his free hand. “What does this make me?”

Again, Machiavelli sighs, as if he’s being patient with a child. “You’re Cesare Borgia,” he answers, “and you can either save this galaxy, or end it.”

Cesare doesn’t know whether to scream or to cry. With nothing else to do, he settles for laughing instead.

 

 

When Cesare returns to the farm, it’s nearing noon, and his parentage has caught up with them at last.

The stormtroopers left Aunt Giulia’s body out for the scavengers so her bones lay smouldering just outside the door of the main house. Though he’s heard blasters before, he’s never seen what they can do. “We have to bury her,” he says once he finds his voice, watching the sand blow over her body. “I can’t leave her here.”

To his relief, Machiavelli doesn’t argue, and helps him dig a grave. By the end of it, Cesare’s taken off the shirt he’d sweated through in the heat, and has burned his back red. There’s oil for the burns in the main house bought at the market in Anchorhead, expensive and imported, but he doesn’t think of getting it. In the sky above, the binary suns shift from nearly noon to nearly evening until the golden sands look blue. On normal days, he’d be helping close up the farm for the night. Maybe he’d go to town. Maybe he’d stay in, and lie on the roof to chart the constellations.

Aunt Giulia painted the night sky on his ceiling when he was six, and said he could use it for navigation practice to fly one day.

“I’m going to kill them,” he says, leaning against the shovel and gripping the handle tightly. Sand clings to his body as though Tatooine’s resisting his imminent departure. “My father, my brother, I don’t care. It’s their fault.”

“Now don’t say that,” Machiavelli says, dropping his own shovel carelessly. There’s little point in putting them back when they’re leaving without plans to return. “Your father asked once if killing was permissible if the reason was just. Look at what’s come of that question.”

The fear of turning into his father is abrupt and new. As he drops his own shovel, Cesare says, “Well, screw him anyway. We should leave before the Sand People come to see the damage.”

There’s nothing left in Tatooine for him now but a charred skeleton. Even if he can’t kill his father for this, Cesare’s always been inventive. Revenge comes in other forms.

As they walk away from the grave, Machiavelli says, “You’ve thought of something.” Cesare doesn’t look back. “Am I allowed to know what it is?”

“I’m thinking that I have a brother my father must be proud of,” he answers as he hops into the cruiser. “If I can’t kill Juan, I’ll redeem him instead.”

In the bruise light of dusk, Machiavelli’s grin becomes a sliver of cleaned bones.

 

 

During school and in Anchorhead, Cesare went by Borgia. When he applied for the Academy, Aunt Giulia forged the papers under the name Farnese. In the rare times he entered Mos Eisley, he shed his secondary name altogether.

It’s a disgusting city thriving on criminals and an invisible economy the Empire never bothered with. The cantina Machiavelli leads them into houses few locals outside the workers, and the music foreign. Though Cesare can drink and has been able to for years, he avoids the bar, not trusting whatever they serve, and shadows his new teacher instead to the potential pilots. There are two of them, a tall man with orange hair and a receding chin named Micheletto, and a second with a round face and short hair a few shades lighter than Cesare’s, whose real name probably isn’t Cardinal. Neither of them look promising, but at the moment he’s willing to hitch a ride with anyone.

He lets Machiavelli handle the negotiations the same way that Captain Micheletto allows his partner to right up until Cesare notices the orange haired man hasn’t taken his eyes off him the entirety of the conversation. “Hey, you,” he says, drawing everyone’s attention. “Cut it out or you’ll lose the best pay you’ll get offered all year.”

“You haven’t said your name,” Captain Micheletto says, still not lifting his unrelenting gaze, “and you’re angry. I don’t trust angry boys who don’t introduce themselves.”

Without pause, Cesare says, “We’re paying you not to ask questions,” because he refuses to explain to some stranger that stormtroopers killed his aunt less than twelve hours earlier. But then Machiavelli looks at him too, and Micheletto’s eyes narrow. “But my name is Cesare.”

Though he doesn’t offer a surname, neither Micheletto nor Cardinal ask. Machiavelli agrees to a price high enough to buy Mos Eisley itself, which means he must be expecting help on Alderaan, and two hours later they’re all outside a ship that looks cobbled together from scrapped parts.

“Fastest ship in the galaxy?” Cesare says, glancing to Micheletto, who has his thumb tucked into his cross-chest holster like he’s expecting an attack. The ship’s name is the _Millennium Forli_ , he said in the cantina. “Does it fall apart every time you go into hyperspace?”

As Cardinal begins to say that’s not how hyperspace works, the captain whips around, blaster firing at a spot of white appearing around the corner. “On the ship,” Cardinal says as Micheletto wraps his hand into Cesare’s sleeve and tugs.

Machiavelli makes it to the ship first, then Cardinal, who goes straight for the front. Without a break in his shooting, Micheletto shoves Cesare down and out of the way, so he has to catch himself on the wall to keep from losing his balance. The _Millennium Forli_ takes off with a lurch, but Micheletto remains steady at the entrance, firing until the door shuts. Though no stormtrooper said the name Cesare Borgia, nor called out anything much at all, the angry, confused glare the captain sends his way as he runs past is harsh enough to make him feel as though people inherently know.

When he reaches the control room, the others are already there, and Cesare can see Tatooine disappearing rapidly behind them. With a few flipped switches and a turn of a dial, the _Millennium Forli_ breaks the atmosphere. Tatooine becomes a sphere of golds and reds and browns, and then a shrinking circle of dull yellow, and finally nothing at all. At eighteen, Cesare’s never been further than Mos Eisley, and now he’s left the planet in less than a half hour.

Once they’re finally out of sight, Machiavelli sighs deep in relief, and sinks into the high-backed chair behind Cardinal’s. As Cesare moves to do the same in the fourth chair, Micheletto stands, grabs him by the front of his shirt, and slams him against the wall. “You didn’t pay for trouble with any stormtroopers, boy,” he says, pressing the blaster to Cesare’s chin. “What did you just walk us into?”

“Don’t be angry with him, Captain,” Machiavelli says from his seat, as though Cesare weren’t able to defend himself. “He’s only here because of me.”

There’s a tense moment where no one moves before Micheletto removes the blaster and releases his grip. “Do you have the calculations yet for the hyperspace jump?” he says, turning away to Cardinal as Cesare takes his seat. “It won’t be long before the imperial starfighters catch up to us.”

“Just give me a minute,” Cardinal says, typing something into a keypad with his left hand. “All right. There.”

With that, the stars stretch into lines, the _Millennium Forli_ gives another lurch, and Cesare makes his first leap into hyperspace.

 

 

During Lucrezia’s first few nights as prisoner of the Empire, she dreams of an unbroken shore that stretches past the horizon in every direction without its ocean in sight. Her skin cracks and blisters red; her throat’s the driest it’s ever been. When she wakes, the pain is gone, but the memory of it sits thick on her mind like it were real.

She wonders if Juan Borgia is the cause behind it. She wonders if the destruction of Alderaan gave him bad dreams, too.

It’s three days before he comes to see her, and the anticipation of his visit has left her anxious. He leans back against the entrance of the cell, and runs his eyes down her unwashed, dirty body. “I’ve put in a ransom to your mother,” he says, folding his arms across his chest. “I know she’s alive, and I know she must have put together by now where you are. This leaves all of us with two options: either she gives me the information I requested in return for you, or you give me this information instead, and I allow you both to live.”

“Then you might as well kill me now,” Lucrezia says, mouth thinning. “You know I won’t tell you anything, and my mother would sooner let me die than surrender to _you._ ”

“Oh, that I know,” he says, “but her planet is gone. Her husband. Her son. Even the best of us get desperate. Once the message reaches her, how long do you think it will take before she tries to rescue you from right inside the enemy base?”

Though she can trust her mother to keep silent, Lucrezia can’t say with any certainty that Mother wouldn’t lead an assault on the Death Star simply for revenge. “No ship is impenetrable,” she says. If the droid found Machiavelli on Tatooine, if Machiavelli found Mother—well, then a rescue attempt may have a chance. “Everything has a weakness. Every person does, too.”

“Well, some of us more than others,” Juan Borgia says with the same smile he gave her on control deck. “But I’m willing to bargain with you, Lucrezia—”

“ _Princess_ Lucrezia.”

He laughs. “Yes, of course,” he says, “though can a princess be a princess without a planet to be princess of?” As he moves away from the entrance, he continues, “Lucrezia, when your mother attacks, we both know it’s in my better interest to kill her there. But I can ignore this better interest if you tell me what I need to know.”

Even if she were to find a way to kill herself in this barren cell of hers, she realizes, then Juan Borgia could easily still pretend to have her onboard. Her mother would still have to face the trouble of having to attempt a rescue. But giving up wouldn’t help either. Before anything else, Lucrezia is Caterina Sforza’s daughter, and surrender is never an option. “Then kill us both,” she says, leaning forward as he crouches down so they crowd one another’s space. “You might have destroyed Alderaan, but you didn’t push that trigger personally. Do you have what it takes to wipe out the last of a dynastic family yourself?”

Now that they’re level, she’s struck again by how young he is. His hair’s cut unevenly, like he did it himself, and there’s something familiar about his face she thinks she’s seen before. Maybe they passed each other in a street as children. Even people like him were children once, after all. She hates him more for his age, because she pities him a bit, too.

“More than you do, I think,” he says, rocking back on his heels. The lightsaber’s hilt dangles at his waist inches from the floor. “The Emperor and I are the last two alive with Borgia blood, and the goal of your rebel troops is to kill us both, or so I understand. That makes us even.”

Lucrezia bites her cheek to stop herself from saying it’s different, because she knows it isn’t. If Juan Borgia really is as young as he appears, then he was raised in this conflict as surely as she was. Maybe if he’d been raised as she was, with rational parents rather than a dictator as a father, then he wouldn’t have been able to damn an entire planet for a single interrogation.

When she doesn’t answer after a minute, he stands again. “Killing Caterina Sforza would be satisfying,” he says, “but I admit I don’t celebrate the thought of killing you, Lucrezia. But if your mother doesn’t come within the week, you and I will have to send her a louder a message. Unless you give me what I need, of course. Tell your attendant when you’ve decided.”

As he leaves, she shuts her eyes, and falls back against the bench. She pictures the sands of her dream flooding with water deep enough for Juan Borgia to drown.

 

 

Nearly a week after leaving, the _Millennium Forli_ flies through an asteroid belt that was once Alderaan, and gets dragged into the gravity field of a space station the size of a moon. Though Machiavelli claimed earlier that Cesare was a quick study with a lightsaber, he wasn’t expecting to fight anything more than a droid’s zapper for at least a month.

Machiavelli tricks the stormtroopers who come aboard the ship into giving over their uniforms, and then Micheletto, without delay, shoots them in the head. “We should be charging you double,” he says, glaring at Machiavelli even as he throws a stormtrooper helmet to Cesare. “Hurry up.”

After making quick work of the uniforms and the bodies they once belonged to, Cesare exits behind Micheletto and Cardinal. Even though Cesare feels like he’s making too much noise in the ill-fitted suit, no one looks twice at them. He’s also oddly, acutely aware that this is his _father’s_ army they’re infiltrating, his father’s base he’s walking through as though he belongs, and underneath the white exoskeleton these soldiers call protection, he’s still wearing the clothing Cardinal gave him on the first day. It’s been five days since they first left Tatooine, and Cesare is the cleanest he’s ever been.

They stop in the first door they find where Micheletto kills everyone before they can lie. By now, Machiavelli’s explained the Jedi code of morals, and Cesare thinks he was probably one of the worst ones the Order had to offer by the way he stays silent.

“Stay here and keep the door locked,” Machiavelli says as they all remove their helmets. “It will be easier to lower the shields if I’m alone. Cesare,” he continues, “avoid doing anything rash.”

“Like going with you?”

“Exactly like that.”

In the short moment it took them to talk and him to leave, Micheletto and Cardinal already piled the corpses into the corner opposite the one Gioffre’s in. “Ever kill anyone before?” Micheletto asks, taking a seat in one of the two available as Cardinal takes the other. “You don’t look as horrified as you should for some farm boy from the Outer Rim.”

He doesn’t mention Cesare’s apparent fate to train as a Jedi. Maybe he should care, though, because of what Machiavelli told him, but then he thinks about Aunt Giulia’s bones left to rot in the sand. “Who said I’m from a farm?” he says instead of answering, because they paid for no questions asks. As long as he isn’t the one doing the killing, it shouldn’t matter that he’s letting someone else do it for him.

With a quick glance to Micheletto, Cardinal says, “You don’t look despicable enough to be from Mos Eisley or Anchorhead. There’s nowhere else nearby.”

“We’ve gone past the limit of what you’re paying us for, if you can even pay us at all,” Micheletto says, bending forward so his elbows rest on his knees. “The way I see it, you owe us your name.”

Before Cesare can tell the captain to fuck off, Gioffre lets out a series of squeaks and whirs alerting him Princess Lucrezia is here. He rushes over to the far wall where the droid’s looping the security footage from the detention level, and finds a new blue, pixelated image of her lying on a bench.

Cardinal, who’s standing too now, sucks in a breath. Ignoring him, and ignoring Micheletto’s judgement, Cesare turns back around to push past the other man. “I was supposed to be looking for a specific person,” he says, hands curling in prepared anger at the denial he knows the captain will give him. “Turns out she’s here. If you help me rescue her, she can pay you double.”

“How do you know Lucrezia?” Cardinal says, still staring at the screen. “You aren’t part of the Alliance.”

The way in which he says it is so matterafact Cesare’s almost offended. “She sent this droid to Machiavelli,” he says, nodding to Gioffre. “I found it. How do you know her?”

Now Micheletto’s standing, too, looking over the Cardinal’s shoulder to the screens they hadn’t noticed. He places his hand at his blaster. “Cardinal used to be a Sforza,” he says, “so that’s his niece.” Turning his attention back to Cesare, he adds, “I guess we’re all liars here.”

As they concoct a plan, Gioffre lets out another shrill beep to say the Emperor has just arrived.

Cesare Borgia, the unknown son, keeps this information to himself.

 

 

Of course, Juan’s on his way to the detention level when Father arrives a week before schedule.

“I hear Caterina Sforza may be on the way,” he says when Juan asks why he changed his plans. Though the stormtroopers had gathered to meet their leader, they’ve all dispersed now, leaving Juan and Father largely alone in the harrier. “You can’t expect I’d leave you alone to face an entire rebel fleet.”

It’s degrading, hearing his father doesn’t think he can handle a simple rescue party, but he holds the thought to himself. “No, Father,” he says, more tense than he has been since before the destruction of Alderaan. “We’ve seen no sign of them yet, but they’ll come. Sforza won’t leave her daughter.”

When Juan was younger, Father told him about the Sforza family’s tenure in power, and how they almost ran the Galactic Republic to ruin. Her daughter shouldn’t have to die because of her, but perhaps if the rebels stopped intercepting every Empire operation, the star systems could return to their past provenance. Over the past six years, Father’s trusted Juan to do the groundwork of this while he stays within the diplomatic sphere, so it’s angering that he steps out _now_ to try and help. Juan can do this alone. _Has_ been doing this alone.

Then Father smiles, and claps his hand at the back of Juan’s neck, leaving it there. “I’ve tried to teach you before about underestimating your opponents,” Father says. “While you stay busy waiting on Caterina Sforza, she’s already sent someone else here.”

“What?” Juan says, indignant because he hadn’t noticed anything. “How? Who?”

Father’s grip on the back of his neck tightens. “Oh, you’ll have to be the one to answer how,” he says, “but as to who? It’s someone I haven’t felt in a very long time.” Releasing Juan, he continues, “No one comes to a station like this alone. Find the others.”

“Is this why you came?” Juan asks, turning as Father walks away. “Did you have intel? Who?”

As expected, he doesn’t answer, slipping into the far hallway, his white robes dirtying themselves as they sweep across the floor. Juan clenches his jaw, trying to calm himself before he hits the wall. “You,” he says to a small group of stormtroopers milling discreetly by the entrance to the main base. “Raise the alarm. We have guests.”

Within seven minutes, the station is locked down. If Lucrezia Sforza and her daring rescuers make it out alive, then Father will kill him, and the rebels will have one less Borgia in their way.

 

 

When the door to the cell opens, Lucrezia’s sleeping. She wakes with a jolt, disoriented, and finds a wiry, curly haired boy standing there. “I’m here with your uncle and Niccolo Machiavelli,” he says, holding out his hand. “Come on.”

More awake now than she’s been in days, she reaches out, accepting his hand. “Who are you?” she asks as he drags her up and out. Though her legs are weak after so long in confinement, adrenaline gives her the steadiness to move forward. “My uncle?”

“Lucrezia!”

Ascanio Sforza, younger brother to her mother, sweeps her up in his arms so she’s pressed against the hard white casing of a stormtrooper uniform. From over his shoulder, another man in a uniform shoots at real stormtroopers trying to make it through the main entrance.

“I’m confused,” she says as her uncle places her back to the ground, shooting over her shoulder to the other entrance. The boy, who’s dressed in clothing rather than a uniform, swears, and pushes against the wall. “What are you doing here? I haven’t seen you—did my mother send you?”

There are more pressing questions, such as who the two he’s with are, and why a stranger entered her cell rather than family, but they seem unimportant. When he goes to answer, though, the boy calls out, “Micheletto, shoot the lock.”

With a sparking blast that shocks the entire far wall, a blaster shot connects with the lock pad of the main entrance, and destroys it so the door closes in front of the approaching crowd. As the other man pivots to fire at the other direction, Ascanio asks, “Can you shoot?”

“Of course,” she says, and he pushes a second blaster into her hand. There’s no stun setting on this, she realizes, but after days here as prisoner, she doesn’t hesitate to aim for an approaching soldier’s helmet.

The shot connects. He’s protected by armor, and crumbles to the ground anyway.

Between the four of them, the entrance is cleared before the other one is fixed enough to open. The man with her uncle—Micheletto, the boy said—jerks his head, and Ascanio takes her by the arm, leading her after them. Though the boy must be around her age, he’s the tallest of all of them.

When they step outside the detention block, the boy shoots the lock pad again so the door slams shut right as the one at the other end of the hallway reopens. “I’m Cesare Farnese,” he says, kicking a blaster out of the hand of a half-conscious stormtrooper. She watches her uncle and the man with him catch each other’s eye, and Ascanio lift a brow. “Left?”

There’re no stormtroopers waiting for them around the first corner, nor the second, but they hear the footsteps coming right as they reach an intersection. “You two go that way,” Ascanio says to her and the boy. “We’ll have them off. Micheletto?”

“Meet back at the ship,” Micheletto says, and they run before Lucrezia can call them crazy.

“Are you with the Alliance?” she asks, following Cesare closely and trusting he knows where he’s going. “Did my mother send you?”

He shakes his head, jostling his curls. “Your uncle’s a coincidence,” he says as they head up a staircase. “He was our ride. I’m Machiavelli’s neighbor.”

If Machiavelli’s his neighbor, then he’s from Tatooine, and must have been heading for Alderaan. The thought of her home planet constricts her throat, but she swallows down the feeling, and keeps moving forward. “Where is he?” she says, but all Cesare does is shrug. “Oh, that’s comforting. Where’s my droid?”

Though she’d seen the Death Star plans herself, she could never recreate it, which makes the droid more important than she is. This makes her feel even less comforted when the boy shrugs again. “Back to the ship if he’s made it that far,” he says, and then stops so suddenly she collides with his back. “Who decided to put a pit without a bridge?”

They’re standing at the edge of a collapsed crossway just above a pit that’s bottom she can barely see. A stormtrooper appears at the opposite edge, and falls down with a shout when her shot connects to his chest. Cesare swears at the sound of footsteps growing louder behind them, and shoots his blaster down the hall. The alarm finally starts blaring as the center door she hadn’t noticed they passed through slams shut, and more stormtroopers appear on the opposite ledge.

“Can you work this thing?” Cesare says as they keep against the wall, shooting whatever they can reach.

It’s a standard lock pad, she sees upon quick inspection, and wonders if this is his first time in a space station. “Give me three minutes,” she says, first shutting the door, and then searching for what she needs to extend the crossway.

In the time it takes for her to work it, he’s shot down every approaching guard with better precision than she expected from someone from Tatooine. He takes her hand like he did in her cell, so she stumbles over her feet as she tries to keep in step with him. Even with safety nowhere in sight, her energy’s fading.

At the top, she shoots the fourth lock pad of the day, and steps gingerly over the bodies of unconscious stormtroopers. No one else seems to be coming, but this is more worrying than comforting; by now, they must know where she is, and there has to be a reason they withdrew.

They stop in front of a window looking out across a large open area filled with smaller space crafts. With an odd sort of smile that reminds Lucrezia uneasily of Juan Borgia, Cesare says, “Looks like they beat us here,” and nods to her uncle and Micheletto running towards a large ship.

Then, suddenly, the two fall back as if hitting a wall, and Juan Borgia steps from the shadows of a starfighter. Lucrezia skids, nearly falling in her effort to change directions as she tugs at Cesare’s arm, pulling him with her to the wall. Her heart thuds hard against her ribs, and the blaster is heavy with its uselessness. That’s her uncle, who she hasn’t seen in years—her _family_ , after losing so many—and there’s nothing she can do.

“Make a run for the ship,” Cesare says as Juan Borgia’s lightsaber extends from its hilt. In the short time they were together, Lucrezia hadn’t seen Micheletto miss once, but Juan Borgia blocks every shot before it comes close. “I’ll distract them.”

Even on Tatooine they must know who Juan Borgia is, surely, but she can’t see another way in which they even have a chance of getting out alive. She looks to Cesare, nods once, and runs.

Halfway there, she sees the Emperor himself in the hallway just visible beyond the ship, his red blade pushed through Machiavelli’s chest. A scream of frustrated hopelessness builds in her throat, but then she hears Juan Borgia shout out in pain.

She doesn’t turn back to see who managed to hurt him, or how. In a moment, she’s at the top of the ramp and onto the ship where her little droid rattles happily. Ascanio rushes past her, barely sparing a glance, but not Micheletto nor Cesare.

“Tell them to hurry up!” he calls from the front without explaining how he’s here and they aren’t.

There’s no need, she realizes when she looks back out. Juan Borgia’s on the ground, curled up into himself in a forming pool of blood, as Micheletto and Cesare run for the ship. “They’re coming,” she tells her uncle, and moves out of the way as they make it up the ramp just as it shuts. Micheletto makes for the front, too, so she turns her attention again to Cesare. “What happened? Did you kill him?”

“I distracted him, so Micheletto shot him in the stomach,” Cesare says, collapsing onto a seat by the wall. “There’s no guarantee he’ll die.”

Juan Borgia might not die, but Lucrezia’s alive, and she’s free, and Mother won’t have to lose her daughter, too.

 

 

Hours after Juan nearly dies on the floor of the harrier, Father finally comes to visit. “The doctor informed me that you’re going to live,” he says, standing at the side of the medical cot with his arms tucked behind his back. “You’re lucky to, after being shot at such close range.”

Slowly, painfully, Juan sits upright, but still can’t bring himself to stand. It’s been years since he was last hurt so severely, and even longer since he was distracted during a fight, but there was that _boy_. “I’m aware, Father,” he says, curling his fingers around the edge of the cot. “I’m the one who was shot.”

Father’s mouth twists and his eyebrows bend in as he says, “How? How did you allow this to happen? To _let_ them get away?”

“It was an accident,” Juan says, looking down to his father’s shoes. “It won’t happen again.”

“See that it won’t,” says his father with his voice laced through with undisguised anger. “You are a Borgia. Borgias don’t make these sort of mistakes. If your brother had lived, he never would have—”

“I doubt that.”

It’s rare Juan talks back to his father, though he has no qualms doing so to anyone else. Father freezes, eyes narrowed just enough. “What makes you so certain?”

If Juan were a good son, he would tell Father the truth right now, that a boy dressed in a poor man’s clothes appeared from Lucrezia Sforza’s side and called him _brother_ so quietly only he could hear. But there’s no reasonable way to explain that somehow, Juan just knows that the boy was exactly what he implied. The man with the orange hair said his name as they ran, and Juan’s felt it rattling around inside his head ever since. _Cesare, Cesare_. Like some sort of drug.

His grip tightens until he loses feeling in his fingertips. “We’d be family, Father,” he answers. “Two brothers in the same vocation would tear each other apart.”

“Well,” Father says, “you might be right about that,” as though Juan were never right about anything.

Father’s footsteps hit like heartbeats against the metal floor as he leaves, and Juan hears his brother’s name in every one of them. _Cesare. Cesare._ Each echo of it sounds like ruination. Whoever he is, Juan liked him better when he was dead.

 

 

Lucrezia Sforza wears her grief for her family and her people like an well-worn dress, but Cesare doesn’t know loss. The entirety of his childhood revolved around his aunt with Machiavelli’s occasional interception, and now both are dead. As Cesare quickly learns, the easiest method to handle the situation is to ignore it until no one else is around.

Ignoring it is hard, though, when Lucrezia won’t stop asking questions, and Micheletto keeps watching him. Cardinal, or Ascaino, or whatever he’s meant to be called now, only has eyes for his niece.

“Mom used to tell me stories about the Jedi Order,” she says their first day together, after Micheletto tells her Machiavelli was training Cesare. “You don’t seem like much of a Jedi, Cesare.”

Though Cesare hadn’t grown up on any stories of the Order, unlike Lucrezia or her uncle or even Micheletto, he learned enough in history to know she’s right. “Well,” he says, “I guess you could say I got a late start.”

In the bright white lights of the _Millennium Forli_ ’s main area, her yellow curls look like they were spun from midday sun. The ship’s on autopilot, and the four of them sit around a small round table with Lucrezia and Cesare side by side. Though the others are drinking something native to Naboo, he keeps to water instead. A week hasn’t been long enough for the constant supply to lose its novelty, which she seems to think, too, from how often she’s showered. She hadn’t been able to do much of anything at all as prisoner, she said, and even though Cesare’s still learning about politics, he would’ve thought a princess should expect better treatment.

Cardinal, who sits across from him, finishes his glass. “The kid’s only been training a week,” he says, as though Cesare were ten and not eighteen. “If you had more time, you might’ve even stopped Juan Borgia from deflecting the shot.”

“Yeah,” Cesare says. “That would’ve been good.”

During the week before boarding the Death Star, Machiavelli explained that the Force could be used to manipulate physical objects, not just sense them. He’d tried with modest results onboard, and doesn’t know if he or his brother were responsible for the deflected shot.

From the way Micheletto keeps looking at him, Cesare thinks he knows what the other man believes. “It broke my record,” Micheletto says. “I don’t miss.”

“Well, it doesn’t matter right now,” Lucrezia says, “as long as we’re alive. Anyone onboard will die anyway once we get these plans to Mother.” Her voice catches on the word “Mother.” Cesare understands, unfortunately; he hasn’t been able to say his aunt’s name since he left Tatooine.

“The Emperor and his son might have evacuated by then,” Micheletto says as Cardinal mumbles “hopefully” under his breath. “They know you have the plans. People don’t like dying.”

“Juan Borgia doesn’t think we can do it,” she says, catching her bottom lip between her teeth. “He asked me if I had what it takes to kill the last of a family like he hadn’t just killed mine. He—” She takes a deep breath, cutting herself off, and doesn’t continue.

Oddly, Cesare finds the idea of this doesn’t appeal to him as much as it should. With the exception of his short time in the stormtrooper uniform before he faked prisoner, he hasn’t thought of the Emperor as his father. Juan Borgia, alternatively, has solidly moved to the category of brother. Would I have been like that, Cesare keeps thinking, if no one had taken me away?

He never cared about much other than Aunt Giulia, but he might be able to care about a sibling given the chance.

Sighing, Lucrezia reclines against the wall, which puts her close to Cesare’s side. “Uncle,” she says, “you aren’t going to leave again, are you? We need good pilots. The ones we have come from all over the galaxy, of course, but—Cesare?”

“It’s nothing,” he says quickly, willing himself to calm down. “I just remembered someone from home saying they wanted to jump ship from the Academy and join the Alliance. He doesn’t like me.”

“Why not?”

“I broke his nose.”

Cardinal laughs, and even Micheletto does something resembling a smile. “What was a farm boy doing,” he says, “breaking someone’s nose?”

It’s been years since Cesare’s felt like he has to impress anyone, but Micheletto’s watches him like some sort of challenge, and Lucrezia looks like she’s waiting for a story. If anyone from Tatooine really did reach the Alliance, then Cesare is screwed, but for now, he uses the story of Baron Bonadeo and his broken nose to make Lucrezia Sforza laugh.

 

 

When Lucrezia arrives at Yavin 4, Mother is in the middle of preparing a full assault on the Death Star and its fleet without the help of plans. Rufio, her second in command, leads Lucrezia and her friends in, and doesn’t step aside quick enough to avoid being knocked in the side when she runs forward to hug her mother.

It’s only been two weeks since they last saw each other, but Lucrezia feels as though she’s aged a number of years. “We have the plans, Mother,” she says when she finally moves away. Mother’s hair is falling out of its pins, and trailing around the sides of her face. “Uncle Ascanio and his friends saved me.”

“Ascanio?” Mother says as Rufio directs the others forward. “What—you disappeared for twelve years just to show up now?”

Uncle Ascanio’s face is as red as the hat he wears to bed when he steps up to face her. “Well, you see, it was,” he starts to say, but stops, and scratches the back of his head, eyes flitting around to everyone else. Usually, in a situation that involves family, Mother sends everyone away, but she hasn’t ordered that yet, too busy glaring at her brother instead. It doesn’t seem fair, as he just saved Lucrezia. “I’m back now, right? Caterina, this is Micheletto, my, uh, partner, and Cesare. He was with Machiavelli.”

“Your partner,” Mother says flatly, looking Micheletto up and down before turning her attention to Cesare. “How did you end up with Machiavelli? Where is he?”

There’s a long, uncomfortable silence between Cesare finally says, “He’s dead. The Emperor killed him during the escape. I was his neighbor on Tatooine.”

Though Lucrezia had never met Niccolo Machiavelli personally, she heard enough stories to know he was respected more than liked. It’s not surprising, then, when no one immediately comments on what a tragedy this is. Mother nods, and appraises Cesare, too. “What a shame,” she says. “He would have been useful. That still doesn’t explain why you’re involved. Was he training you?”

“He was starting to,” he says. “G—the droid found me first, and I brought it to him. After he heard the message, he left, and took me with him.”

“Why did he take you?”

“Well, stormtroopers had just killed my aunt,” Cesare says, catching Lucrezia off guard, because he hadn’t mentioned this once on her uncle’s ship, “so it wasn’t like I had anywhere else to go.”

Again, Micheletto and Ascanio share a look, like the one they did when Cesare said his surname, and she understands this time. “He’s the reason we were able to get out, Mother,” she says, placing a hand on his arm, before her mother can press for anything else. That can be left for a private audience, because the ripple of gossip’s started through the crowd already. “Cesare was able to distract Juan Borgia.”

The room quiets. Mother turns to her advisors and generals and says, “Everyone out.”

Five minutes later, the room is clear, leaving only the five of them and Rufio, who slouches casually against the doorframe, his hands tucked in his pockets. Uncle Ascanio and Micheletto stand off to the side, now outside Mother’s immediate attention, while she leans back against the table that makes up the center of the room. Cesare stands across from her with Lucrezia hovering next to him, afraid of what her mother will do to him next.

“I’ve known the Borgia family for a long time,” she says, folding her arms across her chest. “Nowadays I make it my business to know as much about them as I can. Juan Borgia has been training since he was old enough to pick up a lightsaber. How did you, someone who’s just starting out, manage to distract him?”

Cesare hadn’t explained this exactly on the ship either, and even now just shrugs. “I came up from behind and called his name,” he says. “I guess hearing ‘Juan’ instead of ‘Juan Borgia’ was enough to confuse him.”

With a sudden suspicious look, Mother asks, “What did my brother say your last name was?”

“He didn’t say anything,” he says. “It’s Farnese.”

There’s something uncomfortable about the way he says his name that she hadn’t noticed when he introduced him during the rescue, or maybe it hadn’t been there. It sounds very much like a lie.

If Mother notices, too, she doesn’t let on. “Well, Cesare Farnese,” she says, “I think we found a use for you. Tell me, how would you feel about going back?”

Cesare agrees, but Lucrezia doesn’t care how if he has any skill as a Jedi or not. She never wants to see him that close to the Death Star again.

 

 

Back on Tatooine, Cesare learned early in life how to sleep light, and he wakes in a blurred, half-conscious panic at the sound of a door opening. Waking quick can mean the difference between saving a season’s worth of harvest in a raid or starving from the loss of it, and it takes him a moment to remember he’s in a dorm room on a moon halfway across the galaxy.

Lucrezia’s small hand is cool and surprisingly soft for someone of her profession when she touches his bare shoulder. “It’s just me,” she says nearly in a whisper as she hops up to sit on the edge of the cot. “I wanted to see if you were all right with tomorrow.”

Even in the dark, she’s so pale he can see her outline clearly, but her features remain hazy. He pushes himself up to sit as she twists to face him, pulling her knees to her chest. Waking him to see how he feels about tomorrow seems ridiculous, considering it makes more sense to let him sleep, but he keeps that thought to himself, and says instead, “Yeah. I’m fine. How’d you get in here?”

“Oh, none of the doors lock,” she says with a dismissive wave of her hand. All she’s wearing is a short sleeved shirt and shorts, which makes him more uncomfortable than he’s used to. “It’s a design flaw the technicians keep trying to fix. Mother’s not letting me help tomorrow, even though I can fly as well as any of them. I think she thinks I’ll get caught again if I do.”

Though he agrees with Caterina Sforza for reasons of his own, he thinks he should probably keep that to himself, too. “Yeah,” he says again. “Well, Micheletto can handle it. I’ve seen him shoot.”

With a slight, almost absentminded nod, Lucrezia says, “I guess. But I still want to help. And I don’t think it’s fair that you’re getting sent back. Micheletto or my uncle can pick you back up, right? Ascanio _promised_ , but it seems risky.”

“We got out last time,” he says, but doesn’t feel as confident about it as he should, since Machiavelli died lowering the shields. “Besides, no one can try attacking until I’m done anyway. You don’t have to worry.”

The only other person to ever worry about him was Aunt Giulia, which makes the obvious anxiety of a girl he’s known for just a week alien. Even Ursula, who acted like he was some baby animal in need of protection, didn’t care this much.

Lucrezia wraps her arms around her knees, and flicks her hair away from her face. “Juan Borgia knows what to expect from you this time,” she says, and though he can’t see her face clearly, he imagines she’s frowning. “What if you’re caught? There has to be another way to do it.”

“Probably,” he says, because there’s no point in lying, “but not one to come up with in one night.”

“Even shields for a station that big will go down if you hit it enough times,” she says. “That seems smarter than sending someone in. I know Mother’s sending you because you have _some_ training, but what are you going to do if you have to fight him again? Or if you run into the Emperor? He might still be onboard.”

What little training he received from Machiavelli has nothing to with why he’s the one sent in, and he knows it. He’s new, and unknown right before a major assault, and expendable. If he were in Caterina Sforza’s position, he would make the same decision. Even if Cesare doesn’t have much of a plan himself, this still makes the most sense.

“Then I’ll get away long enough to get the shields down,” he says. It isn’t what Lucrezia wants to hear, but it’s the truth. “The space the pilots need to shoot through isn’t that hard, but they’re going to have imperial starfighters on their backs the entire time. They have a better chance if they have more time without the defenses. You’ll be here?”

Nodding, she says, “Like I said earlier. Mother won’t let me go, even if she’s sending you, and we’re the same age, so she can’t say I’m too young. She already tried that excuse.”

Over the past week, she hadn’t done much that struck him as _young_ , but after years of helping run the farm, he doesn’t feel like a kid. Thinking of her that way would be hypocritical, even if she is half his size and her hands are still soft. On Tatooine, no one’s hands were soft, even if they lived in the town rather than the farms, and he’s never met anyone who smiles as often as she does. Even after a week locked in a cell and having to watch her planet die, she still smiles. It’s weird—and makes him uncomfortable how much he looks forward to seeing them.

Aunt Giulia would like her, he thinks, if they had the chance to meet.

“So what’re you supposed to do?” he says. “Wait for us to come back?”

“That’s the intention,” Lucrezia says, and unfolds herself so she falls back against the wall. “Come back, Cesare. I’d hate to think you were hurt because I sent that droid to Tatooine.”

Even if she hadn’t sent Gioffre to find Machiavelli, Cesare would’ve been dragged into this eventually from one side or the other. All this did was accelerate the process. But it’s late now, and he’s tired, and he doesn’t want to think about what could have happened if he hadn’t selected Gioffre from Jawa line up. “I’ll come back,” he says. “Maybe we’ll even the kill the Emperor.”

“I don’t think I’ll be so lucky to get both,” she says, sighing. “I suppose I should let you sleep, Cesare. Sleep well.”

She leans over and hugs him, her arms snaking around his shoulders and side pushed up against his chest, but then she’s gone before he has a chance to react. The door swings shut behind her with a decisive _click_.

 

 

There’s a girl loading Gioffre into the back of Micheletto’s temporary ship when Cesare arrives in the loading dock the morning following Lucrezia’s midnight visit. She’s already there, fixing the flap of her uncle’s bright orange uniform, and telling both Micheletto and him to be careful.

“Have you ever been in one of these before?” Micheletto asks when Cesare’s close enough, jerking his head towards the ship. When Cesare says no, he hasn’t, Micheletto continues, “They’re made for two people, but not to fit comfortably. At least it’s a short trip.”

The Death Star finally reached Yavin 4 last night, or so Cesare heard when he first left his room. Another hour of sleep would’ve been preferable, but that was no longer an option by the time Lucrezia entered, if he judges time correctly. “I’ve had worse,” he says, looking at the cramped space he’s going to suffer with for a very long half hour. “When do we leave?”

“You two leave before the rest of us,” Cardinal says as Lucrezia stops fidgeting. “You should get back to Caterina.”

Frowning, Lucrezia says, “Mother can wait. Micheletto, will you go back in when the shields are down?”

After eighteen years of only having Aunt Giulia and, on occasion, Machiavelli out in the Jundland wastes, Cesare doesn’t know how to act in the face of someone worrying over him this much. She rocks back on her heels as she says it, and stares at Micheletto like she’s giving him an order, not asking a question.

Micheletto, despite how often he seems annoyed, just nods. “If I can,” he says, and looks up at Gioffre as the technician climbs down. “We should leave. Is everything in place?”

As the technician launches into an explanation about droids and communication with the pilot, Cardinal picks up his helmet from the top of a stack of pins carrying spare parts. “I should start setting up,” he says. “I’ll see you when all this is done. Cesare, Micheletto, good luck.”

“You too,” Cesare says as Lucrezia hugs her uncle goodbye, and then hugs him, too, after Cardinal walks away. It’s the same sort of hug as the night before, but longer. Cesare wonders if she’d want a kiss goodbye, and what her mother would do if she found out.

But right now he has more important things to worry about than pretty girls there’s no point in kissing, so he puts the thought of his mind. That’s something to think about later when he gets back. If he gets back. When.

The technician walks away with a good luck of her own, and a “Your Highness” to Lucrezia, who steps back when Cesare lets her go. “I’ll see you soon,” she says rather than goodbye, and disappears through the maze of ships to find her mother.

“Ready?” Micheletto asks once it’s just the two of them, halfway up the ladder. His mouth is sent in a line, and he looks like he hasn’t slept in days. “Climb in behind me and hold on to the back of my seat. This would be easier in the _Forli_ , but that’s too conspicuous.” He says conspicuous like it’s a curse, repeating what Caterina Sforza told him earlier. Even after two weeks, Cesare saw that the _Millennium Forli_ was superior to any spacecraft here, and doesn’t feel much safer.

He gets in after Micheletto, and scrunches up his legs to fit. Landing inside the shields won’t be easy, but Cesare isn’t as concerned as he should be. “Let’s get this over with,” he says, pressing the button to lower the clear top of the ship, and thinks Machiavelli would agree it’s all right if the Emperor dies as long as Cesare doesn’t do the killing himself.

 

 

By the time Juan realizes his brother’s onboard, the ship that delivered him is already gone, and the boy is skulking somewhere in the lower decks.

He doesn’t alert the guards, though he should, because he knows his father must have spies on him now despite the good natured way he said goodbye. One slip up is bad enough, but two is inexcusable so close together, and Juan knows what to expect. This time he can handle his brother on his own. Only later will he puzzle out when thinking of a stranger as family became so simple.

When he finds the boy—Cesare—he’s already reached the room control center, though he hasn’t yet approached the platform. At the sudden telltale hum of the lightsaber, he startles and turns, his own out quicker than Juan thought. “You know what the rebels are doing,” his brother says, not attacking, even though logically he should. “Isn’t it a good time to run away? You’re going to die if you don’t.”

“You’re with them,” Juan says, sounding more indignant than he has in years. It angers him enough that he has a brother that was supposed to be dead, and now isn’t; finding he’s on the wrong side makes it infinitely worse. “I thought that idea would appeal to you, _traitor._ ”

“How am I a traitor?” he says, lowering his lightsaber a fraction as Juan realizes it’s blue, which means it’s the one that was meant for him before Machiavelli stole it. “The Empire’s been fucking over the Outer Rim for years. Everyone hates it.”

“Oh, the Republic didn’t care about Tatooine, either,” Juan says, because it’s true, and he can’t pretend the Empire’s neglect of the Outer Rim is the fault of the Alliance. “Don’t look so surprised. You weren’t hard to find, Cesare _Borgia._ ”

Discovering his brother had kept their family’s surname was insulting, because Father may be too busy with political affairs to notice the oddity of that name appearing in the Outer Rim, but Juan shouldn’t have been. Cesare even registered for school with it, and was living with a woman named Giulia Farnese, who Juan already knew of as his mother’s sister. It was an oversight as inexcusable as allowing himself not to notice Cesare now, and Juan wouldn’t doubt Machiavelli’s involvement in the matter. If anyone could deflect attention so successfully and for so long, it is—was—him.

And now the Alliance has Cesare Borgia in their grasp. It’s _unfair._

“You didn’t find me,” he says, “so whose fault is that?” and lowers his lightsaber completely. “I’m going to lower the shields, Juan, but I don’t want to fight. Get out of here so you don’t die.”

Juan could go kill his brother here, and return to the desk. Without a complaint, his men will destroy Yavin 4 on command. But he stays. “I have men up their fighting yours already,” he says. “The imperial starfighters are faster than anything the Alliance has. The single weakness this station has would take an expert and a miracle to strike. These are my men on my station. Their lives matter more than yours.”

Even as he says it, he knows it’s obvious to someone with an understanding of the Force that he’s lying. Father taught him early on to cultivate respect, but not return it, because soldiers and officers come and go. In the end, people are expendable, and often fickle, because they all have their own agenda. It’s the family that matters. The Borgia name. The Empire. Though Cesare may be in direct opposition of one of those three, he’s in the niche for two, which means some inane, small part of Juan inherently thinks he matters. What makes it more insulting is that Cesare appears to agree.

“But I’m your little brother,” Cesare says with a smile eerily like Juan’s own. “I thought older siblings were suppose to care.”

He only attacks because it’s true, but then the force of the two lightsabers colliding with one another pushes Cesare back onto the control platform. At the same time, a tremble rocks the entire station, indicating the fire attempted assault made onto the shields. Then Cesare reaches out to attempt to grab one of the levers, and Juan strikes forward, aiming for his hand. With the same dexterity as earlier, his brother blocks the blow. The strength behind the parry isn’t as strong as it could be with his stance as inadequate as it is, but it’s annoyingly good enough.

Another assault rattles the station so the metal piping screeches against each other. Above and around them, a hundred footsteps pound against the floors, but no one enters the control room. Before Cesare can even try for level, Juan attacks. The blades connect with the sound of an electric current, and he forces his brother back against the railing. It’s an easy position to unsteady him, and simply knock him over. Or at least it would be, if it weren’t for a third assault unsteadying Juan instead just as Cesare figures out the Force just enough to push Juan away. He stumbles, but recovers fast enough to retaliate, disarming his brother so his lightsaber rolls just to the edge of the platform.

Even without the help of a weapon, he’s fast, but his lack of training means Juan’s faster. Though he wasn’t aiming to kill, his purpose was still to injure more severely than the simple burn on the upper arm he ends up inflicting. Cesare flinches from the pain regardless, and manages to drag his lightsaber back into hand in time to parry a much more detrimental blow to the leg.

Then he turns, the movement sudden, and rather than pull at anymore levers, just stabs the lightsaber into it so the entire system dies. Juan’s attack connects simultaneously, burning deep into Cesare’s back.

Oh fuck, he thinks, and then, This is my _brother._

It’s his little brother lying wounded and entirely too conscious on the floor of a station that might explode at any moment. Juan’s been struck enough during training to known what the pain from a lightsaber is like, because the blade cauterizes any injury. During the fall, Cesare’s lightsaber deactivated, and he’s clutching it so hard his skin’s white like it’s keeping him from screaming. Brother or not, he’s the enemy, and if Juan leaves, he should do so alone. There’s no reason to save him.

“This is going to hurt,” he says anyway, because he doesn’t know much about siblings other than what he’s seen, which is the most of the time they’re willing to die for each other. The least he can do is save his brother, so he reaches down, wraps one of Cesare’s arms around his shoulders, and pulls him to his feet.

He’s light enough for it to be weird given his height, but maybe that’s expected given where he’s from. Blood leaks out of the burn onto Juan’s hand as he half-drags him from the room, up the lift, and up to the deserted main harrier. All escape pods are down in the lower decks, but even with the number of men in the sky, there might not be as many as needed. When Father lectures him on that later, Juan will just have to remind him he wasn’t the designer.

In the moment before he enters the harrier, he feels someone else enter that he recognizes only vaguely. He finds the brown haired man who rescued Lucrezia Sforza jumping out of his ship, blaster already held at the ready. When he sees Juan and Cesare, he freezes, and his finger twitches on the trigger.

Whoever he is, he must care about Cesare more than he hates Juan, because he doesn’t shoot even when they’re in pointblank range. “Take him back to your base,” he says. “Do it fast. Or do you want to waste time killing me?” Rather than give the man the opportunity, he pushes Cesare, who’s now barely conscious, forward, directly into him so his arms are suddenly filled with another person. It doesn’t buy Juan a lot of time, but it gives him enough.

The man’s already in his ship with Cesare when Juan reaches his own, lowering the top over the two of them. They make it out easily, Juan right behind them in a starfighter already flying in the opposite direction, moving away from his doomed station towards home.

It explodes just out of range, silent with a light duller than the stars.

 

 

Micheletto returns first, victorious from making the winning shot, but still unsmiling. “Where’re the others?” he asks once Lucrezia’s reached him, relieved to see him but no less worried. “Did they come back?”

As she goes to answer, someone calls out, pointing upward as Ascanio’s ship enters through the open area of the base’s roof. That means he’s safe at the very least, but there’s no guarantee that Cesare is. She rushes over as they land, Micheletto close behind her, and Mother approaching through the crowd from their left. At a closer distance, she can see Cesare clearly in the back seat, and that Ascanio’s unharmed, turning to unbuckle himself and open the top hatch.

The moment the top is up, he says, “I need a medic,” loud enough for everyone to hear. Lucrezia stops, unsure how to help, but Micheletto goes forward to get Cesare down.

When she reaches them, she sees he’s unconscious, and there’s a burn mark on his shoulder with another on his back that’s bleeding sluggishly. “What happened?” she asks even as she’s pushed aside by the medic, a man with rounded shoulders and straggling black hair that doesn’t look prepared to heal anyone.

“I don’t know,” Ascanio says as Mother comes up to Lucrezia side, and the medic informs them that the marks were made by a lightsaber as if that weren’t obvious enough at first glance. “I got there at the end. Juan Borgia just handed him over. He got away.”

Two protocol droids appear with a stretcher, loading Cesare onto it to take to the medical wing. Though Lucrezia wants to go after him, she stays where she is, because Juan Borgia never lets anyone get away. Mother frowns, and Micheletto frowns, and a ripple of confusion moves through the crowd that minutes earlier was brimming with happiness. Whether Cesare recovers quickly or not, the speculations as to why will have long started before he wakes, or if he wakes.

She thinks she should have kissed him before he left, like she wanted to, because now she may never have the chance.

“He didn’t give a reason,” Ascanio says when Mother asks, “but he didn’t look happy. I would’ve thought he wanted Cesare dead more than most people.”

From the look of it, Juan Borgia had certainly tried. Lucrezia crosses her arms, uncomfortable with any speculation of her own as to what might have changed, and says, “I’m going after him, Mother. Just to oversee his recovery.”

Hopefully when he wakes, he’ll have answers, because she dislikes any possibilities she can think of. Micheletto excuses himself, too, despite other people’s efforts to offer congratulations and thank you’s, but Mother doesn’t let Ascanio go. Instead, she leads him away from any unwanted audience, and away from the direction of the medical wing. Lucrezia wants to hear what he has to say, but she tells herself she can do that later when she hears Cesare’s going to be all right. Until then, she’ll simply have to resign herself to being patient.

 

 

Cesare’s awake not half an hour before Lucrezia bursts into his empty room, and marches straight up to the medical cot. “I thought you were going to die,” she says angrily, before twisting her hand into his shirt and pulling him down into a kiss.

For a moment, he’s too shocked to move, but reorients himself quickly, and wraps his uninjured arm around her waist. She’s so small he has to bend, which strains at his back, but he doesn’t mind—she’s exactly how he thought she would be, soft but not as delicate as she looks. Though they haven’t known each other long, he’s never wanted anyone as much as he wants her.

She presses forward, pushing up onto the balls of her feet, like she’s wanted to do this for days, too. But then there’s a scraping outside the door followed by the noise of the lock mechanism at work, and they split apart so fast she knocks her hip against the the cot. It’s Micheletto and Cardinal, who both take one look at Lucrezia and Cesare, then at each other, and Cesare knows that they _know._ Suddenly, the realization of what it means to kiss Lucrezia _Sforza_ hits him in full, because she’s a princess, and he’s just some farm boy from Tatooine. Worse yet, he’s a Borgia.

After a short, but obvious silence, Cardinal says, “My sister wants to see you,” as Micheletto’s gaze slides from Cesare to Lucrezia.

“Right,” Cesare says, trying to stand straighter and regretting the decision instantly. He might be healed, but both the wound to his shoulder and the one to his back left scars. “Why?”

“She wants to know why Juan Borgia left you alive,” Micheletto says, but something about his voice is off, almost like he’s upset, though Cesare doesn’t know why he would be. “This way.”

The walk to the control room where Caterina Sforza waits for them is short, and feels even shorter. He’d rather not explain that presumably Juan left him alive because they’re brothers until he has no other option.  

When they enter, Caterina’s not alone, but surrounded by advisors. Her hair’s unpinned, the curls falling down her back like her daughter’s, but her expression isn’t nearly as forgiving. “I hear you’re lucky to be alive, Cesare,” she says, glancing at his shoulder, though the injury is covered by a new shirt. “First—”

“Wait,” a voice he recognizes from Tatooine says, raising unwanted from just beyond Caterina. “Cesare?”

Caterina turns, unblocking Cesare’s view of Baron Bonadeo, the guy who blackened his eye for breaking his nose. Instinctively, Cesare looks around for a possible escape route, and finds none. This is it, he thinks. I’m going to die.

“You two know each other?” Caterina says.

Bonadeo’s nose is crooked when it wasn’t as a teenage from Ursula not setting it properly. “We were a few years apart in school,” he says, not bothering to hide his glare. “I heard someone from Tatooine was here, but I didn’t expect Cesare Borgia.”

In an instant, Caterina’s twisted back around, her blaster out and held level to Cesare’s head. This wasn’t how today was supposed to go. “Borgia?” she says, as though anyone should believe Bonadeo over him. “Cesare _Borgia?_ ”

“It wasn’t,” he starts to say as Lucrezia moves away, but Bonadeo’s talking again, overlapping his attempted explanation as he says, “His aunt was fostering him, I think, out on the farms. They weren’t very social. Very secretive.”

No one can be social when living in the farmlands, and Bonadeo knows it. Cesare keeps his focus on Caterina, though, and tries to think a way out of this. “Look, I didn’t know until the droid showed up,” he says. “Machiavelli told me not to tell anyone.”

Caterina’s hand tightens around the blaster, finger pressed against the trigger. “I don’t care what instructions that man gave you,” she says. “I offered you my hospitality. I trusted you. I expect honesty. And now Juan Borgia knows, doesn’t he? Or he wouldn’t have left you alive.”

“He figured it out,” he says, which isn’t entirely a lie. “Apparently he looked me up when he realized I could use the Force. There aren’t that many Farneses.”

It’s not until after he says it that he realizes Micheletto never said the last name he gave them. From the way everyone is looking at him, Cesare expects his friend to out him right there, but instead Cardinal steps forward and says, “During our rescue mission, I did say his full name, Caterina. Juan Borgia heard.”

“Tell me why,” Caterina says, not lowering her blaster. “Tell why if you’re with us Juan Borgia would want to keep you alive.”

“It’s in his best interest to,” Micheletto says from behind Cesare. “The Empire loses more star systems’ loyalty by the year. Turning his brother would make a powerful ally. It’s a good idea to keep him close.”

The room’s silent, everyone in it waiting to see what their leader will do, until Lucrezia says, “Mother, he did save me.”

Finally, Caterina relaxes her grip on her weapon, and places it down on the table. “I’ll let you off for now,” she says, “but I’ll have eyes on you. Do _one_ thing I don’t like, and I’ll shoot you on the spot. Understood? Good. You’re dismissed.”

She turns her back as if forgetting about the situation already, and begins her lecture on the work that still needs to be done. As Cardinal takes a seat, not looking at him, Micheletto taps Cesare’s uninjured shoulder, and motions to follow him out. Lucrezia trails after them, and Cesare feels everyone else’s eyes on him as they leave.

 

 

Later, when Lucrezia’s calmed down enough to look Cesare in the eye, and Cardinal’s done with the meeting, they convene in his and Micheletto’s shared room.

Even though she’s done yelling at him for lying now, Lucrezia clearly still isn’t happy, and the other two aren’t much better. Cesare takes a seat in the one chair in the room, careful not to lean back against the burn, as Micheletto leans against the rod of the bunk bed, arms crossed. “We saved your life back there,” he says, one corner of his mouth pulled down into half a frown. “You better earn that.”

Cardinal, who’s sitting down on the lower bunk, rests his elbows on his knees, and says, “What I want to know is how he did find out. We didn’t say your name.”

“I had something to do with the Force,” he says, though he knows how that sounds. Even he barely believes it, and he can access it. “I don’t know, I don’t really get it yet, but sometimes you just know things.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Lucrezia says bluntly before sighing. “Can it tell you whether or not someone is lying?”

Though he doesn’t know for certain, he nods, because it seems safer to confirm any experience Lucrezia might’ve had dealing with this. “I don’t have the training for that,” he says, “but it’s possible. But I’m not with the Empire. You can trust that.”

“I wouldn’t have said anything if I thought otherwise,” Cardinal says. “No one can fake being as clueless as you were. Someone working for the Empire would know how to work a normal rehydrating food packet.”

Lucrezia almost smiles, and says, “Or a lock pad.”

“We were getting shot at,” he says, and she smiles in full. “Machiavelli didn’t tell me anything until the day we found you, and the only reason he did was because he saw it as a way to get back at the Emperor. And that’s it. Once we were on the _Forli_ he didn’t explain much.”

During the week period they were with Machiavelli, Micheletto and Cardinal should have learned enough about his personality to understand. Thankfully, Micheletto agrees, and says, “That still doesn’t explain why Juan Borgia kept you alive. It would’ve been better for him to kill you before you could train.”

The three of them look at Cesare expectantly, as though he’s supposed to know what goes on in his brother’s head. “I don’t know,” he says. “He seemed fine with killing me until he actually hit me. Maybe he does want me over on his side. He called me a traitor.”

Almost everything about that short encounter with his brother was confusing, but it’s the label of _traitor_ that’s bothering him the most. He doesn’t care so much about the connotation itself, but the way Juan talked about the Empire was like he genuinely didn’t see what was wrong with it. Even for someone working the inner circles of it, the flaws in the design should be obvious enough. If this were just someone anonymous, he wouldn’t think anything of it, but after telling Machiavelli he’d redeem his brother instead of kill him, he feels compelled to. What bullshit must Juan have been told as a kid to ignore what a fucked up system he’s part of?

Cesare doesn’t think there’s any point in saying this now when their trust in him so fractured already. Any hint of sympathy or vague curiosity towards his brother might be enough to get him shot, if Caterina meant her threat.

“We’re all traitors to the Empire,” Lucrezia says, taking a seat next to her uncle. “What do you think he’s going to do now? What the Emperor’s going to do?”

With the Death Star destroyed, they’ll be incapacitated, but that won’t last for long. “Regroup,” Micheletto says. “Lick their wounds. Then they’ll take their revenge, or at least try.”

He’s right, and the Empire’s forces are numerous enough that they probably can, too. In the meantime, Cesare can train, and win back the Alliance’s trust, because it’s been two weeks and he already hates the idea of being known as his father’s son.


End file.
